The shortest serving Chairman of the Nigeria Football Association, NFA, Mr. Anthony Kojo Williams made some statements during his tenure which I still believe earned him the ire of the lords of our football at the time.
He was young, like the present president of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF ( the new nomenclature but still same character) Amaju Pinnick. He believed in the European Leagues especially the English Premier League and he never failed to espouse his love for it and how he intends to turn around Nigerian football.
I still remember vividly when he first said that football was a conduit pipe for government officials who masquerade as football administrators. He talked about how these administrators budget huge sums for football development which eventually end up in their pockets once the government, the sole financier of the game then, releases the money.
Mr Williams did not end there. He also talked about why the game, especially the league was not growing. He did not spare the coaches either, describing them as ‘mediocres’ who have not only failed to upgrade their knowledge of the game but engaged in ‘unholy’ practices which undermines the game.
Years after Williams made that revelation, Fanny Amun, before he became Secretary General of the NFA, albeit for a very short time revealed how a serving Brigadier-General came to him with his son, claiming the boy was “a very good player” and wanted him included in the Golden Eaglets team preparing for a major competition.
It was a military regime and Amun couldn’t say no to the General and drafted his son to join in the training. He however, made sure the father was on ground to watch the son train with other boys. It did not take the General time to conclude that his son was not up to the standard required and so left.
That was because the General was not desperate and Amun was also not desperate to enrich himself. He wanted the best players for his assignment and the end result proved him right. He won the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 1993 with a crop of talented players who went on to make waves later. He had the likes of Nwankwo Kanu and Wilson Oruma among others.
It has always been said but in hush tones that national team coaches assigned to our age grade teams collect money from prospective players. No one has come out boldly to say it until during the week when no less a personality of the sport than Daniel Amokachi voiced it out not at a football forum but during a protest against corruption in Abuja.
Amokachi who was not only a great player with the Super Eagles in his days but has had a stint as a coach with some national teams, the U-23 and the Super Eagles as assistant to the late Stephen Keshi, joined forces with a coalition of Civil Societies Organisations operating under the aegis of National Support Group for good Governance to protest against corruption in the country.
Read him: “My name is Daniel Amokachi. I have said I will support the movement(against corruption), because in my field which is sports, corruption is endemic.
“Corruption has invaded sports so deeply that even in FIFA headquarters in Zurich, we saw how the world stood up and said “Enough is enough!” We saw how the president, Sepp Blatter was not spared. He was removed from office because integrity matters when it comes to the constitution.
“For instance, in Nigerian football today, the youths, when invited to the national team, a coach will ask them to bring N250,000 each to get into the U-17 team when he already has the talent. If a person has talent, he should be allowed to showcase what he has in the interest of the nation.
“A small team cannot win the Nigerian league because all the people in Nigerian football are corrupt. If a referee is bribed and a match is won here, the match cannot be won there.”
Read Gemade’s reaction to Amokachi’s comments: “I’m very particular about your comment on football because I’m one of those who love football. And I started a club called BCC Lions, which you know. And I have witnessed all that is happening in the sports arena. And I know that corruption is killing it just as it is killing all other aspect of our national life. We must fight corruption’’. Senator Barnabas Gemade received the group at the protest rally and also reacted.
If Amokachi is not to be taken seriously, what about the comments of Senator Gemade, a one time Governor in Amokachi’s state of Benue which ran a great football club, BCC Lions which terrorised Africa at a time. And Gemade was in-charge at the time and knows what he is saying.
You can imagine that days after Amokachi made this weighty statement at a public forum where Senator Gemade sort of presided, no statement or reaction has come from the mangers of our football or league.
But when I wrote on this page a couple of weeks ago about the shenanigans going on in our football, the League Management Company quickly jumped in, trying to rubbish my opinion which was backed with documents bothering on forgery I stumbled on. Documents signed with different titles and some without names, all in a bid not to own up to a contract the football body entered into with an organisation which came to is aid, so to say, at a time the league was suffering from financial kwashiokor.
Just like the National Judicial Council which tried to shield some corrupt judges saying no one petitioned it on the alleged corruption of the said judges, the NFF must not wait to be written on this issue of corruption allegation by no less a person than Amokachi and corroborated by another big player, former Governor and now Senator Gemade.
No one is saying that the LMC has not done anything or is not doing anything about corruption in the league or the NFF is not also doing something about corruption among coaches or referees but both bodies should not say it doesn’t exist. All Nigerians are asking both bodies to do is intensify efforts to curb it even if we can’t totally eradicate it.
The recent failures of our youth teams in the age grade competitions as well as complaints of poor team selection in the senior teams which caused the Super Eagles to miss out of the Africa Nations Cup back to back are pointers to the corruption in football. The insistence of the NFF leadership on hiring a foreign coach for the Eagles is not unconnected to these corruption allegations. The NFF top wigs know I know because they told me.
credit: vanguardngr
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